EU data protection
chair calls for US access to passenger details to be postponed- doubt
cast on legal basis of Joint DeclarationThe Chair
of the EU's Article 29 Working Party on data protection, Stefano
Rodota, has called for the "Joint Statement" between
European Commission and US Customs officials to be postponed
"for as long as required in order to finalise a quick formal
procedure".

Mr Rodota, in
a letter dated 3 March 2003 to the chair of the European Parliament's
Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Mr Jorge Mollar,
said that "many delegations" attending the meeting
of the Council of the European Union's Working Party on Aviation
on 20 February raised "doubts and concerns in respect of
the legal nature, contents or actual force of the Joint Statement".
He says that the factual circumstances, of the Joint Statement
which allows US Customs to directly access the reservation databases
of airlines based in the EU is "devoid of a legal base"
and:

"national
data protection supervisory authorities and judicial authorities
of Member States are not free to apply or not apply national
laws merely on the basis of relevant advisability, and it has
not yet been clarified how the Joint Statement might provide
a sound legal basis to justify an exception to the rule"

and may:

"give
rise to claims at national level - which may also be lodged at
the request of individual citizens who might apply either to
DPAs [data protection authorities] or to judicial authorities
if they consider they have suffered damage on account of data
transmission"